


there is no unreturn'd love

by tortoiseshells



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Dealing With Trauma, Emma Green and Henry Hopkins Have Terrible Dates, Extremely Dodgy Historical Context, F/M, Future Fic, Garden Variety Hospital Bloodiness, Implied/Referenced Suicide, In Which The Author Press-Gangs Harriet Beecher Stowe's Novels For A Poor Joke, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-06 18:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16837792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: This was some terrible farce, something she should be laughing at, but her hands were still shaking and all she wanted was to get out of her bloody, dirtied clothing, her too-tight corset, the too-small attic room, her own skin.





	there is no unreturn'd love

It wasn’t cold, but her fingers felt as numb and lifeless as they’d been that January, not long ago, when she’d stuck her hands into a rare white snowdrift, and, shrieking with laughter, launched a snowball at Jimmy. Emma recalled how the flakes had clung to her hands before melting away, the little rivulets collecting between her fingers, in the curl of her palm. It had been a marvel, a miracle that she – fresh from the Wentworth Female Seminary – could explain, catalogue, and scientifically describe, but to see it? It was a gift from the Allmighty, and she smiled, so wholly delighted that she laughed off Alice’s teasing, and the moon-eyes Frank made at cousin Diana.

Emma looked down at her hands and tried to remember what such shock and joy had looked like, and felt. The shock came easily – she’d not slept in two days, and what she’d seen in that time had set her to shaking. Exhaustion, not cold, ruined her dexterity. Instead of little runs of melting snow, blood had been ground into the lines of her hands, pooling in the same places. God above, the colors: the vivid madder red she’d once associated only with aunt Edith’s favorite ballgown, rich burgundy like wine, and a horrible shade close to black she’d never seen outside of the hospital. All over! – dried tight, too tight! – on top of her skin! Squeezing her eyes shut, Emma rubbed her palms down the front of her apron, too late realizing it was a lost cause: her clothing was just as bloodied.

She cried out, then, and attacked the knots and pins holding her together. Her over-arms and apron she threw into a corner, struggling mightily with the wooden buttons down her bodice and holding her skirt closed. After an excruciating time, hands as good as a statue’s, she shucked them off, leaving her in nothing but her underpinnings and the accumulated filth and blood of days in the hospital. But her fingers, struck numb with fatigue and fear, grappled uselessly with her corset’s knotted laces. Two day’s wear must have worked them tighter, she realized – and sunk down onto her cot, breath coming hard. This was all of a piece.

“Miss Green?” Henry’s voice was muffled by the door. “Miss Green, what is wrong?”

“Nothing! I – I am fine, Chaplain, thank you.”

“You are not,” he insisted.

Emma wasn’t. She knew she was lying, and was well aware this was not a problem to take to a man of God. She reached behind herself and tried once more, fumbling with the laces. She couldn’t. Absent a second pair of hands, she was stuck in a chemise with days of sweat and grime grinding into her skin, leaving her feeling simultaneously raw and soiled. Or, she realized, a simpler solution. 

“Do you have scissors, or a knife? Anything sharp will do – even a bayonet,” she tried to laugh at this last, but it came out sounding simultaneously brittle and soggy.

“I do not.” He sounded even more worried. “Miss Green - ”

“I am fine. There’s – there is a knot. My hands – I’m – my hands are numb – I can’t work it loose. I have to cut it.”

“Cannot someone help you?”

She huffed in frustration, though it still had strains of panic to her ears. “It’s ah – it’s a rather delicate matter. I couldn’t - ”

On the other side of the door, Henry coughed and cleared his throat. If blushing had a sound, Emma was sure that’d be it – and, _Lord_ , she could feel herself blushing under the dirt and tears. 

“You see, don’t you?” she said quickly, recklessly, trying to cover up their awkwardness. “Please, will you get me a knife?”

There was silence, and pacing footfalls on the other side of the door. Every time she thought he would go and do as she asked, and she could be rid of this, could breathe, the footsteps returned, and in her mind’s eye, she could see Henry. His color was likely high on his cheek, and he would have the pained expression he always wore when he ran into the limits of his ability. “Miss Green, I have five sisters –can you not – from the front?”

And wasn’t that just like the man? Knowing too little to be useful, and just enough to embarrass them both. This was some terrible farce, something she should be laughing at, but her hands were still shaking and all she wanted to get out of her bloody, dirtied clothing, her too-tight corset, the too-small attic room, her own skin. She pressed one red hand against the whalebone, and the other to her mouth. Squeezed her eyes shut. Did he need an answer? She could hear his footfalls still. “No, Chaplain. I’m afraid I can’t. Not from the front. ”

“Oh.” It was a small noise.

“Please, get me what I asked.”

“You’ll hurt yourself.”

“What?”

“You said your hands were numb. You’ve been on your feet for days, Miss Green – I’ve been there with you – I know. I – I don’t want you to hurt yourself. You mustn’t-”

“Chaplain Hopkins, if you won’t help I will leave this room as I am right now, and I will go find what I require!” Emma stamped and put her hand to the doorknob, ready to swing the door wide and damn the consequences. On the other side, in the hall, there was a clatter and the doorknob shuddered as Henry grabbed it.

“Miss Green, please. You cannot do that.”

“I can,” she cried, “I can and I will!”

“You know you cannot. I won’t let you – endanger your good name.”

“Then help me!” Her voice cracked, and she knew he’d heard it, heard the desperation seeping through. “It’s too close in here – I can’t breathe! Please!”

Henry was quiet, but the room was not – her heart was pounding, and her blood sounded like a locomotive in her ears. She’d seen this before – they’d seen this before –this breathlessness, this jittering and shaking, this derangement –she dropped her hand from the doorknob to clap it over her mouth. From the other side of the door, she heard the response: “Yes. I – I’ll help, where I can. What you ask.”

“Thank – thank you,” she coughed out, and tried to breathe as deep as she could before continuing, “You’d better come in. I can’t – not in the hall – I can’t be out in the hall.”

Emma stepped back from the door, and to the side, feeling much less sure than she had a handful of moments before. Frustration gone, misplaced anger at Henry extinguished, her hands took to trembling once more – perhaps they had never stopped, only she didn’t notice? She swiped at her eyes and sniffed, turning to face the wall, hugging her elbows, listening to the door click shut behind her. This was humiliating and terribly improper, but if she didn’t look him in the face, perhaps they’d both be able to pretend it was impersonal – that Emma was only a tangle to be sorted, and Henry the pair of hands to do it.

“It’s the knot – just the knot – if you can manage that for me, I’d be obliged.” She glanced over her shuddering shoulders, only catching a quick look at him standing as still as a statue. “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

His ‘no’ was barely audible.

“Here. I’ll show you. It – it should be these – but I – I’ve only made it worse,” Emma continued, reaching to point out the knot and its lace-ends behind her, “Here. And here. I can’t – can’t tell what I’ve done. I –sorry.”

“Emma. Your hands?”

“I’ve washed as best I can,” she snapped, flinching away from where he’d brushed her hand, “Please, just – just the knot. I can take care of the rest.”

Henry took the ends from her hands, hesitantly. For a moment, she thought he’d speak again, say something about the blood, or her trembling, or the obvious evidence that she’d been in tears. He didn’t. Emma pressed her hands together against her sternum, as though that would stop her stuttering lungs, attempting to focus on breathing evenly, and not the insistent pull as Henry worked the knot behind her, the echoing of Tom Fairfax’s fearful words from so long ago. _There’s no air. There’s no medicine for what ails me. Or worse, a coward._

Was that what was happening to her? It must be. Emma began weeping again, harder than before. _A danger to himself and others_. Herself? Was that what Henry had feared? Surely not – surely he knew her better than that – surely she could never do as Tom had done? There’d been others, like Tom, through the years at the Hospital, but none she’d known and loved as they’d been before the War. None she’d failed so horribly. But they’d been soldiers – _soldier’s heart_ , Doctor Foster said in that close backroom – and _I’m not a soldier_ , she’d said, in the woods. She hadn’t seen battle. What she’d heard – seen –done – in the hospital, though – those were memories she’d never be free of. 

She was weeping hard, now, hard enough that she didn’t notice the knot giving way, or that Henry had stepped back, only to return with something to put over her shoulders. Wool. Army blanket. It scratched maddeningly, and she shook under it. _Lord_ – her skin – _it crawled_!

“I’ll – I’ll return quickly,” he said, voice shaken, leading her towards the cot, “Emma. The knot’s undone. You can breathe. Breathe deep. Sit here, I’ll be gone a moment – Just a moment.”

The door clicked shut. 

Emma sobbed. She’d thought that, without the bones of the corset against hers, without the knot, without the chemise tight to her skin, her breath would come easier. It didn’t. Her lungs burned, as though she was inhaling smoke – though the lamp gave off very little, and nothing else stirred or burned in her attic room. Emma coughed into her shaking hands, shuddered. Choked. 

_God Above_ , she tried to pray – as though that had gotten Tom Fairfax anywhere – had pushed the too-close walls back to where they belonged – had made a room seem a home and not a tomb – had convinced anyone that they were far from death and dying and the dead. _God above_! She really was going to scream, when she found the air in her lungs. She would! The kind of scream that had been building over days and weeks and months – over a year and more – a thing within her that grew unbidden like creeper. She shucked off the corset and rubbed her breastbone, all the while hearing the rush of blood coming up in her ears. What was there to fear? What wasn’t there to fear! There were chambers like this in her books of plays and myths, rooms where the walls collapsed in like so, burying men alive – or crushing them dead. 

No! She spun her mind out, away from her horrible imaginings, but the terror was like Virginian heat: everywhere, relentless. It cut down to her bones, shorn her of the bits of joy she’d salvaged and husbanded like a child with Christmas sweets. She was alone – bloody – war hollowed her out – poured only agony and hopelessness in – _Lord_ , but she would scream, would be sick, if she could only stop sobbing –

She wept desperately and quietly, by turns – never stopping long enough to scream, as she felt she would and must – returning to her tears inevitably. There was no one point, so far as Emma could see, that would have made her like this – weeping, broken – but perhaps that was it? It wasn’t this day, it was months of this day? It hurt – burned – to prod at, and she let it be, curling in on herself. She hardly stopped when Henry returned, holding a steaming basin before him, or when he put it aside. He sat beside her, laying a careful hand on her shoulder. He spoke, voice so low she couldn’t distinguish the words – _Lord_ and her name braided together, a prayer? 

Emma continued weeping, until she’d exhausted herself – cried herself out, as Belinda would’ve said. There was a kind of enervated peace to it, or an acceptance. She could bring herself no further, in any way.

Henry, seeing this, offered her another kerchief without a word, and pulled the only chair in the room next to the cot. The basin he moved atop it. Emma watched, exhausted and exanimate, as the hot water steamed in delirious arabesques that disappeared in the beams.

“There is soap, as well,” he said softly, lifting a linen-wrapped square from his pocket. “I – you looked – I thought you would want to wash more thoroughly, after such a day. I’m sorry I was so long away.”

Blinking furiously, she looked over at him – a proper distance away, sitting still and looking unsure, smaller, worried. Terrified. She took the soap from his hand.

“I – I should leave you,” he began, unsteadily, words belied by how reluctantly he broke contact, and how transparently troubled he looked. Emma’d seen that look before, on long vigils – never before directed at her. She’d never given him such cause to fear for her soul, until now.

It was easy – and easy choice, easily effected – for her to interrupt him. “Please don’t go. Not yet.”

“You want me to stay?” 

_Will I help you_? Was the question Emma heard. _Yes_. “Please.”

Henry did as she asked: he sat down, again, and watched her obliquely, as though that would create any meaningful privacy. She started to scrub at her hands, but the block was slick and her grip still worthless. She held and lost the soap once, twice, three times – each more frustrating than the last – until she found herself close to tears once more. 

“Here.” He reached forward, slowly, gesturing towards the basin. “Let me – will you let me?”

Neither of moved, for a moment. Emma felt – ridiculously – that perhaps this was too far, too much. That letting Henry Hopkins into her room, begging him (wasn’t that what she’d done?) to help her undo her laces, and weeping openly before him while she stood half-dressed – that all that was not so intimate as this. She batted the feeling away. Handing off the block and linen, Emma shifted stiffly but closer, as Henry worked lather off the soap and into the basin, and wrung out the cloth. The ritual was familiar, of home and hospital. Comforting. She thought of the hundreds of times she had performed this office for herself, and others, and the ease and relief it brought.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “For – for all of this.”

“There’s nothing you need apologize for. Close your eyes.” 

Emma did, and minded the feel of the linen on her face. She must have gotten blood on cheek while she was crying. “I’ve embarrassed myself. And you.”

“I’m not.”

“That’s a lie.”

“No,” he insisted, “It’s not. You needed help. There. You can open your eyes.”

He was looking at her, when she did so – guileless, worried. _Help_ seemed a bloodless word for what he’d given her, but if he chose to speak of one thing, and yet do another, that was his business. 

“I did,” Emma said, simply, “Thank you.”

“You’re breathing easier.”

She agreed, letting him scrub at the ingrained blood on her right hand.

“Should you,” Henry paused, looking as though he was gathering his courage as well as his thoughts, “Should you like to speak to Doctor Foster, when we return?”

“I know what it is.”

“I know. But – ”

“What will Doctor Foster tell me that I don’t already know?”

“Nothing. But, Emma, you deserve care. Consideration. Gunshots and dysentery aren’t the only ailments that come from the War.”

“I’m not a –”

“Soldier, yes.” Henry frowned, wringing the cloth out again as he looked at the blood still under her nails. “You should have the same kindness you’ve shown to your charges. To everyone, every soul, in the hospital.”

She ignored the inference of the last, and didn’t remark on the too-serious look that even the worst of the red shouldn’t have elicited. It was like Henry to worry so, and like her to regard his fretting with a mixture of frustration and gratification. Emma sighed, and shakily agreed. It was useless for her to protest what she did or did not deserve. Instead, she let him continue in silence, finishing with the right, continuing after a moment’s hesitation with the left.

“Better?” He asked, at last.

She looked down at her hands, almost clean, and almost free of the shaking. “Yes, thank you.”

“I’ll take care of this. You should sleep. It will be a long journey home.”

“And you?” 

He picked up the basin, shrugging. “I expect there’s some floor left for me somewhere.”

“Oh,” she said, quietly struck by the image of Henry sleeping in the dust, while she claimed the last cot, “You might – will you come back, first?”

When he didn’t respond, she continued, “I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts, just yet. Company is a comfort.”

Henry, after a pause, agreed, and left a moment later. Emma switched into her clean chemise, as quickly as she could – not very, at least as exhausted from her sobbing as she had been from the two days previous – and wrapped herself up in her shawl, tucking herself into the cot in the shadows. _Mama would faint dead away_ , she thought vaguely, _if she knew_. But it was the company, and not Emma’s trials, that would shock, and any ruin she felt was from the War, and what it had laid at her feet. It was hard to imagine scandal touching her. Not in a way that would matter, that she would mind. 

In the middle of these musings, Henry returned, bearing a candle in the humid darkness, his things bundled in a carpetbag under his arm. “I’ll stay outside the door,” he promised, moving the chair into a corner, “If you need help, if the spell returns, someone will be nearby.”

“I appreciate your doing that.” It sounded bloodless, as bloodless as ‘help’ had before, but he didn’t remark on it. Some wordless treaty had been struck, wherein neither she nor he would say exactly what was meant – something exasperating, Emma thought, but at least something that was as much from their own reticence as any outside influence. Or so she thought she understood it. She was powerfully tired, and now, to lie down? It was hard to give anything serious consideration, only able to hmm and speak desultorily with Henry as he wrote in his copybook, and keep her ear open to his quiet responses, given across the small room. 

“You were reading earlier,” she muttered drowsily, mind wandering, “Yesterday?”

Henry looked up from his little notebook. “I was.”

“What was it?”

“Oh – a book my sisters sent. Mrs. Stowe’s latest. It’s – ah – a historical novel.”

“Mrs. Stowe,” Emma repeated, slowly, looking up into the rafters, “Harriet Beecher Stowe? Who wrote that – oh. I suppose my Southern education is showing.”

He brushed it off, apparently too relieved by her recovery to worry over the world she’d been raised in. “The same. I’d guess there’s not a library south of the Potomac that would welcome her books.”

“Is it about slavery?”

“Not except in passing.”

“Oh,” said Emma, who couldn’t quite imagine what else his reticence might have originated from. “Well, what is it about?”

“Theology.” His smile was unexpectedly wry, in the candlelight, and Emma thought it a comfort, these little conversations. Warming, cozy, like her old and favored shawl. She smiled back, from the cot.

“A compelling plot.”

“The central character is a minister; it could hardly be otherwise.”

Perhaps, if she was less bone-weary, she would have it within herself to be more witty or charming, and say something about Misses Austen or Bronte, but there it was: exhaustion. “Well, is it interesting?”

“I have a curiosity about it. The minister is a – forebearer – of mine.”

“Theologically?”

“Familial. My grandfather’s uncle. Although,” he said, not a little chagrinned, “It is not a good family history.”

“But it is fiction?”

He nodded.

“That is not so odd. Mr. Shakespeare borrowed history for his own purposes frequently enough.”

Henry looked as though he was going to protest, for a moment, but let the impulse go – evidently, Mrs. Stowe’s Hopkins was not so objectionable. Glancing up from his notebook, he only smiled once more. “I suppose Minister Hopkins is beyond being honored or bothered by his fictional likeness.”

“Of course,” she replied, slowly, nearly asleep, “Will you read?”

And Henry did: “Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Jones, and Deacon Twitchel’s wife to take tea with her on the afternoon of June second …”

-

Emma dressed in the half-light before dawn, judiciously using the scratchy wool blanket as though it were a screen. The bloody skirt made her wince anew, but the new chemise was luxury itself, and even clean hands made her heart feel less heavy and shadowed.

Across the little room, Henry was still asleep in the chair, candle burned down to nothing and Mrs. Stowe’s novel cracked open on his knee. There was still time for him to rest, Emma thought, though the chair oughtn’t to be the place.

“Henry,” she said, quietly, with a hand on his shoulder, and considered herself well rewarded by the hazy smile that came as soon as he saw her. “I’m going to go check on the boys, and see about breakfast. But there’s some time to rest yet. Take the cot. I’ll come for you when you’re needed.”

His voice was hoarse from sleep, awkwardly shifting and stretching. “Won’t you need-” 

“I’ll need your help later,” Emma interrupted, not unkindly, “It is a long way back to Alexandria, and I – I rely on you.”

Henry nodded, moving to sit on the edge of the cot that she’d recently left. Perhaps it was still warm where she’d slept, but against all of her mother’s warnings, and all the veiled admonitions of her conduct manuals, this sharing hardly seemed untoward – and if it was, she couldn’t bring herself to care. War had convinced her that kindness was a precious thing, and far dearer than propriety.

Emma breathed deep for courage, kissed his temple where he’d begun to fade grey, and smiled. “I shall see you soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> As the note said, this is Extremely Dodgy in terms of historical accuracy - Emma in the field, _again_ \- and it pains me to say it, but look! A story without tiresome context and footnotes! What year is it? Where are we? Who knows! _mirabile visu_. 
> 
> OK, I lied about footnotes - according to a Hubbell family genealogy (Henry's mother's family), Henry was one of nine kids - four girls, five boys. Wikipedia says ten, but it's not footnoted so I'm going with the genealogy text until proven otherwise. It's my party and I'll make things up if I want to, though, so I flipped the numbers. (Also, @middlemarch, the real Henry Hopkins did marry an Alice.)
> 
> Also, the novel Henry is reading is 100% Harriet Beecher Stowe's _The Minister's Wooing_ , which, apart from being delightfully aptly titled, is indeed a fictional portrayal of a Henry's great-great uncle: the Reverend Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, RI. Apparently it's ... not great history, but from what I've read thusfar, there's a love quadrangle between Our Heroine (Miss Mary Scudder), her cousin, the Reverend Samuel Hopkins, and Aaron Burr - so while I can't say this is Mrs. Stowe's best book, it definitely has that going for it!
> 
> Title from Walt Whitman's "Sometimes with One I Love" - which is slightly bleaker than this, oddly.
> 
> I'm not a medical professional, so Emma's run-in with physical symptoms of anxiety and trauma are heavily drawn from anecdata, and the fact I'm at all writing about it at all is probably just externalising end of semester stress. Happy Holidays, everyone?
> 
> For my friend F-, who said such ridiculous things as "stop reading Civil War medical texts out loud," "Typhoid isn't romantic," and "why can't you just write shippy tropey And There War Only One Bed like a normal person?" xoxo, hope you enjoy reading about trauma instead. In my defense, there was indeed only one cot.
> 
> I finally remembered my passcode for Tumblr, though perhaps we're all off it? Come talk to me: jamesknoxpolka @ well, you know the rest.


End file.
